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Citing lack of opportunities, young women in Japan are not returning to rural areas

  • June 14, 2025

Citing lack of opportunities, young women in Japan are not returning to rural areas

by Hazzat

10 comments

  1. I lived in a rural area in Tohoku for 5 years. (Slightly exaggerating for effect, but) The only females I saw were schoolchildren or oba-chans. There is very little females in their 20’s and 30’s in those area. Why would they want to stay or go back?

    Stay in an urban center to either find a good job or find a much more financially viable partner, depending on which route they want to take? Or go back “home” where there’s very little job prospects or marrying a farmer/fisherman?

    I’m not crapping on people who choose those lifepaths, it’s just the vast majority of people I have interacted with over here…let’s say they aren’t the biggest fans of those paths.

    Living in Tokyo/Osaka/etc is going to be more and more soul and wallet-crushing unless the gov’t can find a way to get the big companies and jobs out of the city centers.

  2. Work from home is one of the many solutions but traditional-minded-bosses and CEOs doesn’t want that because it is not very Japanese.

  4. I mean… are there any countries where young women (and men) aren’t moving into cities?

  5. Instead of investing into completely rural areas, getting people into other cities than Tokyo or Osaka could be good. There are many cities dotted around, where not all people are farmers or fishermen. But even those cities aren’t attractive enough apparently. Young people seem to be attracted to only the biggest cities. Tohoku? Gotta be Sendai. Hokkaido? Sapporo or bust. 

  6. Mm. It’s a sad conundrum. There *are* opportunities everywhere in Japan, they just require skills the Japan Inc school of thought doesn’t provide those in its thrall.

    So, yeah, from a deterministic point of view, there are no opportunities in rural Japan because by definition opportunity exists in Tokyo and it looks like x+y+z.

  7. Would love to live in countryside but 90% of IT opportunities are concentrated in both Tokyo or Osaka

  8. I can foresee any companies offering work-from-home options exploding in business and applicants in the coming years.

  9. LDP wants to keep “”fixed sense of gender roles” in rural communities” at any cost.

  10. ITT: lots of people using the word “females” to refer to women.

    “Female” is an adjective. “Women” is a noun.

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